| Set On Stun |

Guess what? I'm cool and people like me.

You’ve seen the Sony commercials in the last year. Ever since the slim and the price drop Sony seems to have found its sense of humor it lost years ago back in the PS2 days. Their slew of “It Only Does Everything” ads have been entertaining and very funny thanks in part to the style and the spokesman they tasked to be the voice of the company Kevin Butler (actor Jerry Lambert) breaking the fourth wall and talking to us the gamer/consumer about a variety of things.

Now that the PlayStation Move is official it only makes sense that they would task Jerry to do his bit for promoting the new product … by making fun of the other guys. In the ad, Kevin, now anointed  as the VP of Realistic Movements comes back from the future (November 2010) to report on how well the Move is doing and things are going well. He continues by dropping these gems throughout the commercial.

• While waving his arms like a T-Rex, he says , “Because real boxers don’t hit like this.”
• On the topic of the controller he says, “It’s also got what we in the future call buttons, which turn out to be pretty important to those handful of millions of people who enjoy playing shooters, platformers, well, anything that doesn’t involve” … and here comes the dig,  “catching a big red ball.”
• And this one well it might be a dig at both the Wii and the Natal, “C’mon, who wants to pretend their hand is a gun. What is this, third grade? Pew, pew, pew.”

Hilarious? Yes. Asking for a fight from the other two console makers? Hell yes. As a bonus marketing push they have created a Twitter account so you can follow the fictitious Jerry online. It’s some good old fashioned mudslinging that’s more subtle than a political ad but just as effective without ever saying the names of their competition.

As to whether or not Microsoft or Nintendo will respond remains to be seen. If anyone was going to step into the ring first it’s a god bet it will be Xbox but since we have yet to see a single ad for Natal we’re not sure if or when this will happen.

The merits of the three systems are pretty much clear at this point in their existence but with the new motion control peripherals we now have a new area of competition that at this point has Sony already throwing a pretty good body blow in the first round. Looking forward to round 2.

Sony people in the house wave your Move in the air!!

So everybody sitting around at GDC and then Sony starts their presentation ….

Tough year … blah blah, great games Heavy Rain, Uncharted 2 blah blah ….Mag blah blah … God Of War 3 system seller million unit release blah blah blah… more stuff coming at E3 blah blah …. and then we finally get the big announcement ….

The PlayStation …. Move?

All that buzz about it being called the Arc well that was just the rumor mill at high speed. It’s being called the PlayStation Move System — as it was pitched during the presentation “from the tiniest twitch to the strongest punch, it’s ahead of it’s time”  The folks at GDC got a chance to try out this new peripheral first hand and reports are so far so good. Forget kicking balls and painting things, this motion controller had  actual games to show off and not just any games, they brought  PlayStation staple, SOCOM to the party.

In the contest of show me your stuff, Sony didn’t just blow people’s minds — they kicked Microsoft’s ass.

kicking balls? Puleeze -- we so got that beat

Here’s the breakdown

It sort of looks like a Wiimote  except for the weird glowy ball (changes colors too)  but make no mistake — this aint no Wii

• The controller has less buttons and is more streamlined
• It charges using a USB connection just like it’s big brother controller — battery sucking? Not
• The main controller and it’s nunchuck counterpart (known as the subcontroller) are not tethered by a wire.
• The colored ball — that’s your motion detector.
• The report from those who played SOCOM say the functionality blows the Wiimote/nunchuck combo out of the water. What would normally be a clunky interface is now a seamless transition with weapon and movements nicely paired out.
• Depth sensing — if you don’t know what that is well then you haven’t had a chance to not experience that with the Wii. The Move pupports that the glowing  sphere at the end of the controller along with the PlayStation Eye camera work together to solve that issue.

If you’re wondering — those are actual games that you’ll be able to use this new peripheral with. Along with games like cheating golfer tour (Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11) and Little Big Planet (retrofitted). Granted the promotional video is replete with cheese and then some but  this goes so far beyond what Natal showed us last summer.

Natal offers no controller at all but here’s the question — where’s your stuff?

PlayStation Move has

1. An estimated fall launch possibly ahead of Natal
2. A rumored starter package price of $100 (depending on if you already own a PS3 and what you’re planning to buy)
3. Titles that already look cooler than anything we’ve seen on Natal.

The path has now been paved. Come this holiday season the Wii will not be the only game in town and tapping into that casual gamer market when you already have the hardcore gamers as part of your core audience  will be a lot easier for Sony and Microsoft.  For Sony to use GDC to drop their Move bomb was a bold and absolutely brilliant move. These are the folks who you want to sell this system too more than anyone else because they’ll be the ones making games for it.

Tough act to follow? Without a doubt. So Microsoft — show us what you got.

New on the Wii -- The failure game

First of all this is not something I came up with. The buzz on the intertubes is out there. There is a growing belief that the Wii will meet it’s demise this year. Even Nintendo is saying that they expect sales to drop this year — they still think they’ll beat the PS2 as the most successful console ever? Ay but there’s the question — most successful according to what?

If we’re looking a raw sales data then sure (how much of those sales are the console and not the games) — and beating the PS2 is no easy feat. This behemoth was still selling years into the release of the PS3, it’s still out there and there are people, believe it or not, still playing PS2 games. Need I remind you God of War 2 came out for PS2 …  and that was after the Ps3 was released. But I digress. Back to the Wii completely sucking this year.

It’s no secret that many refer to the Wii as the kiddie console. Some may call it the great equalizer bringing young, old, families, casual and hardcore gamers all into the fold of gaming. Marketing wise it’s one of the easiest consoles to market because if you’re running campaigns for something like Wii Resort or Smash Bros. you’re dealing with innocuous spots and trailers and something that resonates with a large audience.  That then translates into parents buying games not just for their kids but for themselves or for “the family.” In fact that was one of the big things you heard this last holiday season  — “We go a Wii” or “We got Rock Band for the Wii.” Yeah that’s great but here’s the thing Wii isn’t delivering beyond that point.

Think of it this way — We currently have three consoles.

• Two of them are high-end multifunctional CPUs with advanced graphic cards that also play games. One of them — plays games. A majority of those games are gimmicky in the sense that they have some feature that panders to the Wiimote.
• Two of them have evolved to a level of performance that allows us to see videogaming like we’ve never seen it before with unprecedented graphics and gameplay the likes of Uncharted 2, Heavy Rain, Mass Effect 2 and Gears of War 2. Developers relish in pushing these systems to their extreme in terms of what they can produce. One of the consoles is not a big fan of third party software, doesn’t have the capability of running the aforementioned games on its platform and  developers of these big budget games don’t even factor the Wii  in their plans for a typical multiplatform release.
• Back in the Gamecube days, the playing field was much more level because you had essentially three gaming consoles. Microsoft and Sony upped the anti in the next round (as did Nintendo with motion control) and having gone past the benchmark of the 5-year gap between consoles both Sony and Microsoft say, “We don’t need new consoles just yet,” knowing they can get a couple more years out of their machines. The Wii typically becomes a novelty shortly after it’s bought

All you Wii lovers and Wii-loving parents can raise your fists and yell about the last bullet point but that’s the truth. Anyone who owns a PS3 or 360 and a Wii will tell you — we play the Wii when friends come over or the kids use it. The rest of the time these gamers default to their primary console.

So why are Microsoft and Sony making motion controllers then? Good question. The biggest reason is to tap into that casual gamer/family market. Notice though that these are peripherals and not entirely new consoles. They know full well exactly how these device will be treated from the developer side. Sure there will be a whole slew of folks looking to make cool motion-control, fun games and figuring out how to retrofit old games to mod with the new device. But  you’re not going to see a developer like Bioware spend time making Mass Effect 3 compatible with Natal or the Arc. You just won’t. That’s why the Wii gets left out so often for the A-list titles. And since they can’t match up to the caliber of games we have seen in the last year and are bound to see this year what’s left for Wii to do? Make more of the same, which ultimately spells — S  U C  K.

Nintendo’s sinking feeling that this year sales will slump is not far off.  As the system consistently keeps getting left behind by developers or the last console you pick for your team, we end up with games that people want to play except not on the system that everyone can use.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a few conversations with some game industry watchers about Project Natal and the reactions to it range from, “it’s a gimmick” to “it will revolutionize gaming”.  However, under the surface lurks the visage of Microsoft’s un-stated strategy.

Project Natal could become the means of content creation on the Xbox 360.

It’s very clear that Microsoft is turning the Xbox 360 into a primary device for consumers. We can update our Twitter & Facebook profiles from the console, we can stream Netflix’s digital library at will, we can listen to our playlists on Last.fm and we can enter a virtual world to play classic arcade games.

The underlying theme is that the Xbox Live platform is a strong social network for gamers to consume media that we want.  However, what’s lacked in the platform has been something that’s inherent in all web and mobile based social networks, content sharing.

One of the core things that changed the web into the social web is the ability for browsers to run native applications through the browser and allow the user to participate, modify and share those applications as they interact with it.  The social participatory network that social media sites have mastered have given us all a platform to share the things we love, hate and do to a wide variety of groups.  Twitter is, for the most part, public.  Facebook is experimenting with different ways of balancing personal privacy with our desire to distribute information.

The second aspect of social media collaboration as it’s evolved has been the advent of real-time updates.  Search giant Google has integrated Twitter streams into its search results page:

Click to embigulate

With the social web combined with the real-time web, there has to be a way to consume media in written, audio or video form, there needs to be a way to share that media with another person in your network and there needs to be a way to modify that media in some form.  Traditionally, the modification of media is comments, ratings or tagging. Lastly, there needs to be a way to create new media, let it reside on a social platform where your network can consume, share and modify it.

Natal fills that gap for Xbox Live. It is a way to modify existing media, it will be able to create new media.

Once that media is created, Microsoft’s Xbox Live has already been looking for ways to spread that media to your network, they’ve been collecting data on how Xbox Live users are actually using Last.fm, Facebook and Twitter and presumably, adding a method that’s more intuitive to share your created content via the Natal update.

Another thing to consider is that Apple has dominated the Zune in usability, user penetration and more importantly, the application distribution and development potential.

With Natal, Microsoft has a unique way for developers to create motion specific applications that can be downloaded from the store, played with and the result of that media consumption and creation will need to be shared with your networks.  If I were to create a really cool picture using “Natal Paint”, I should be able to send that picture to my email, to Twitter, to Facebook.  I should be able to make that creation my background image, the ways for Natal to inspire unique user generated creations is absolutely limitless.

That distribution capability is now being tested.  While some, including my partner Shawn has called Microsoft “drunk” or “stupid” when new features come out that only go half way, I think that this is just the foundation for Xbox Live, in combination with Natal, to explode in the ability to create content and then distribute it.

If I were to be able to link my YouTube account to Xbox Live, I could record my motions in video, apply some paint techniques to add some style, upload it to YouTube and Facebook, promote it with Twitter, then Microsoft would have been successful in creating a fully functional social network out of the browser, away from the computer and in front of all the media we belong to.

The integration of Xbox Live into the Zune is just one more way to spread that content. If I’m right, I think that all of the seemingly random and strange things Microsoft has been doing with Xbox Live lately has been a carefully coordinated test-bed to truly launch Natal as a content creation mechanism supported by a network that will share it with the browser based web.

Play a game -- save real lives

http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=BeAHero

This has to be a first and if not, it’s the first game company to openly take social action in the wake of a global disaster. Bungie has decided to do their part to help out in the relief efforts for Haiti by asking gamers to play Halo 3 or or ODST online from Wednesday 1/20/10 through Thursday 1/21/10 while wearing a specially designed heart emblem on their Spartan uniform (that’s how they’ll track you). For every 1000 players they’ll donate $100. The cap will be $77,000. Additionally in the Bungie store you can buy sspecially designed shirts and other merchandise which will also be contributed to the fundraising through the month of February.

How much easier can they make this? — Play a videogame and raise some money.

Oh and for all those people who always complain about videogames being a bad thing — Suck it!

Thank you Bungie!